Nostalgia

I’m stopped at a red light with windshield wipers locked in their squeaky metronome. Raindrops fall, drip, and streak down the window… a memory suddenly floods my awareness.

I’m a child in the back seat of a minivan, tracing raindrops as they run down the glass. Sometimes I’d race a few of them and wait for a winner to emerge. Often, the low rumble of the road would knock the drops together into one big drop that careens straight down to the bottom.

The rain was a simple two-step with my imagination, a place of comfort and peace. Not lonely, not alone, but fully absorbed in a phenomenon that nobody else is witnessing.

I still find solace in the mundane 30 years later. The world flashes by in bits of blotched red, amber, and green, and my imagination continues to carry me away to worlds within a world.

What is nostalgia but a reminder of who we are?

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